Transcript

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MX AJAX Toolbox White Paper 2
Introduction
This white paper will introduce you to MX AJAX Toolbox, a Dreamweaver
extension developed by InterAKT Online. It will briefly present:
 What MX AJAX Toolbox is and what you can do with it.
 How web developers would benefit from MX AJAX Toolbox
 Top features of MX AJAX Toolbox.
 Some conclusions about the product's market potential and its future.
Web developers and designers can use MX AJAX Toolbox to:
 Build AJAX websites from scratch.
 Update legacy websites with interactive AJAX controls and widgets.
The product provides a visual environment for Rapid Application
Development in AJAX, which does not require JavaScript programming
skills. The extension can be used with the PHP_MySQL and PHP_ADODB
server models, with static HTML sites.
Bringing the benefits of AJAX to Dreamweaver
MX AJAX Toolbox was designed to allow users to build AJAX functionalities
into their websites, while sticking to their typical Dreamweaver workflow.
Unlike other AJAX frameworks that require users to hand-code, MX AJAX
Toolbox integrates perfectly with Dreamweaver, bringing the benefits of
AJAX to developers and designers alike. Because the product uses familiar
Dreamweaver concepts, it has a lean learning curve, making it
approachable by people of all skill levels.
Asynchronous loading of content without page refresh
In MX AJAX Toolbox, the building blocks of any website are the AJAX
panels – regions of
content that users can
place anywhere in their
site and that change
their state
independently from the
rest of the page. Each
AJAX panel has one or
more states – the
actual files included in
the website when an
AJAX request that calls
them is performed.
Working with AJAX
panels will appear very
familiar to developers,
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MX AJAX Toolbox White Paper 3
since the approach is similar to using editable regions in Dreamweaver
templates, or using master pages in Microsoft Visual Studio.
Reduced loading time and server traffic
Since only parts of the site are loaded at one time (states of the AJAX
panels), the loading time is obviously shorter than if the whole page
refreshed. Server traffic is considerably reduced. Because only parts of the
page content are sent, the bandwidth usage decreases and websites will
appear to load seamlessly.
Increased interactivity and responsiveness
With MX AJAX Toolbox, developers can build Rich Internet Applications
(RIA) that interact with site visitors, offering them with a unique web
experience. Visitors can continue using the website while parts of it load
separately and asynchronously. They will enjoy the increased interactivity
that comes with a suite of AJAX controls and widgets included in the
toolbox. AJAX websites will render fast on their first load, while
incrementally loading necessary JavaScript files in the background. This
means users on slow connections (such as dial-up) will be able to see and
interact with the website immediately after they access it.
Dreamweaver integration
Developers can now offer all these benefits to their clients and site
visitors, using MX AJAX Toolbox and Dreamweaver. The two applications
are perfectly integrated. This means they can combine any of the default
commands and server behaviors from Dreamweaver (recordsets, forms,
navigation bars or repeat regions) with the AJAX features provided by the
toolbox.
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MX AJAX Toolbox White Paper 4
MX AJAX Toolbox comes with:
 A template-based engine for working with AJAX panels.
 A quick-start wizard for generating an entire AJAX website.
 9 step-by-step wizards and 12 server behaviors accessible from
Dreamweaver's Insert bar and Application panel.
 5 property inspectors for easily changing the properties of AJAX
controls.
 An AJAX Panels tab for easy managing site content and structure.
 Right-click menus for editing the content of AJAX panel states.
 A CSS skin that can be customized in minutes using Dreamweaver's
CSS Styles panel.
Graceful degradation
A major concern of developers is that AJAX websites are typically not
gracefully degradable: because they rely so heavily on JavaScript, they will
provide only limited functionality or no functionality at all if JavaScript is
disabled. MX AJAX Toolbox has successfully addressed this problem by
implementing a fallback mechanism: whenever JavaScript is disabled or
missing, the PHP server scripting language takes the load of generating
pages correctly and serving them to the client's browser or screen reader.
Graceful degradation is inherently provided by the platform for all AJAX
sites and controls, in that developers will not have to duplicate the
application logic behind their sites.
Accessibility
Because of the way the platform was designed, web applications built with
MX AJAX Toolbox are accessible to screen readers and can be indexed by
search engines such as Google. This way, content will become available to
people with disabilities and search engine ranking will not be affected by
the added AJAX features.
Build more, build faster, build easier
Besides the innovative features mentioned previously, MX AJAX Toolbox
comes with a suite of valuable features designed to make developers
productive with AJAX.
Bookmarking and browser history
In a typical AJAX website, browser navigation would not work as expected,
because most page changes are triggered by various JavaScript events
and functions, not by standard URL requests. Websites built with MX AJAX
Toolbox successfully address this issue and can be bookmarked and
browsed just like any other site, using the browser's Back and Forward
buttons. MX AJAX Toolbox encodes in the URL the exact state of the
current page.
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MX AJAX Toolbox White Paper 5
AJAX widgets and UI controls
Interaction with site visitors is key to the success of any website. MX AJAX
Toolbox empowers Dreamweaver users with several AJAX controls and
widgets: accordion, tabset, collapsible region, photo gallery, dynamic table
with filtering, sorting and navigation, dialog box, tooltip, rating, and
suggest text fields.
Layout changes
Developers often need to display bits of content only on certain pages and
hide them, otherwise. In MX AJAX Toolbox, they can do this using Layout
changes. This revolutionary concept allows them to define events that
change the page layout, making content appear or disappear in a specific
context.
Drag and drop
With MX AJAX Toolbox, users can drag and drop database records to
reorder them or put them into categories. For instance, they can put
photos into albums or arrange products in a product catalog by their
importance.
Web service integration
Dreamweaver developers with a bit of programming knowledge can use
web services built-in the platform to call a server-side function or object
method from JavaScript and asynchronously send a response back to the
client. Using the AJAX Web Service Wizard, developers can build a variety
of form validation routines, such as checking if a username already exists
on the user registration form. These routines will work in real-time, before
actually submitting the form to the server.
Built on a solid, compact, and extensible library
The core of MX AJAX Toolbox is a mash-up of several popular JavaScript
libraries:
 Yahoo UI Library.
 Prototype.
 InterAKT proprietary objects and methods.
The core of MX AJAX Toolbox is in many ways better than other available
JavaScript libraries, in that:
 It is solid. The library's core functions have been tested by thousands
of developers around the world, in different environments and on
different frameworks.
 It is compact. Unlike other AJAX platforms, the core of MX AJAX
Toolbox was designed to keep the overall file size and server load to a
minimum.
 It is extensible. The core was built around popular AJAX patterns,
such as AJAX stub, AJAX micro content and AJAX micro link, in order to
provide developers with the easiest way to extend it.
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MX AJAX Toolbox White Paper 6
Conclusions and future directions
MX AJAX Toolbox empowers web designers and developers alike with a
visual and intuitive way to develop AJAX sites in Dreamweaver. They will
be able to build responsive Rich Internet Applications that load faster, are
degradable and provide a better web experience to users.
The product is currently in maturing beta development mode and is due to
be released in early August 2006. For now, the extension can be used with
the PHP_MySQL and PHP_ADODB server models, with static HTML sites,
but InterAKT online plans to release a version with support for ColdFusion
and ASP_VBScript, as well.
Simplifying web development http://www.interaktonline.com